#1954: Loy Mauch

Loy Mauch is a member of the League of the South and former head of a Sons of Confederate Veterans post. He is also a staunch supporter of the Tea Party movement and member of the Arkansas House of Representatives for District 26 (primarily Hot Spring County) from 2010 to 2012, since many Arkansans were apparently attracted to Mauch’s support for neo-Confederate causes. Mauch believes for instance that Abraham Lincoln should not be honored in Arkansas and that the Confederate flag is a symbol of Jesus Christ and a biblical government.

As for the civil war, Mauch has compared Northern generals to Nazis, war criminals and communists, saying that “[t]his country already lionizes Wehrmacht leaders. They go by the names of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, etc. These Marxists not only destroyed the Constitution they were sworn to uphold, but apostatized the word of God. Either these depraved infidels or the Constitution and Scriptures are in error. I’m more persuaded by the word of God.” According to Mauch, “[t]he South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.”

Indeed, Mauch has even written that slavery couldn’t have been that bad because “[n]owhere in the Holy Bible have I found a word of condemnation for the operation of slavery, Old or New Testament. If slavery was so bad, why didn’t Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?” Mauch’s view of slavery is, however, relatively common among Arkansas lawmakers.

In 2014, Mauch testified at a hearing at a committee meeting to decide to proceed with a law that would separate the holidays honoring MLK and Robert E. Lee. Mauch stated that Lee had committed no crimes, violated no laws and violated no part of the Constitution, claiming that “the historically uneducated continue to denigrate (Lee) with their false accusations,” where “false accusations” means “failure to buy into Mauch’s revisionist history”. (The myth of Lee as the “good slave owner” is relatively common; of course, Mauch wouldn’t really care too much that it’s a myth since he doesn’t think slavery is that bad anyways).

No fan of the 14^th Amendment, Mauch maintains that “[t]he 14th Amendment completely destroyed the Founders’ concept of limited government and was coerced on this nation by radical people and in my opinion was never legally ratified as required by Article V of the Constitution. It was essentially a Karl Marx concept and would have never come from the pen of Madison or any of the patriots from Virginia.” Since everything Mauch doesn’t like is communist. Madison, of course, explicitly wanted to apply the Bill of Rights to the states when those amendments were passed.

Diagnosis: Saying something so patently idiotic should make you ineligible for being left home alone, but in Arkansas you get to be elected to the legislature instead. Baffling. Mauch is out again now, but still.